Router Issues

Your going to have to speak to me in infentile terms on this becuase I don't normally deal with routers at work.

Anyways, I just bought a LINKSYS Wireless-B Broadband Router to use for the machines in the house because we don't want to pay triple the fees for DSL that T-Online is trying to stick us with. I have been trying all day to hook this thing up. I know it has to be an error on my part because when I have gone through the setup on our desktops or on our laptop I get this same error "Error 678: The remote computer did not respond..."

Here is what I have done from start to end. Incert disk, run setup wizard, configure my router, make sure connection is active. Once it's done checking my connections I disconnect my DSL and run one cat 5 cable from my machine into an open port on the back of the router. I then place another cat 5 cable from the port labeled "internet" to the back of my modem in a port labeled 10BT. Then I plug in the router.

From there I tell the Wizard that I connect using DSL and hit next (it just tells me how to hook up the router to the modem and the machine like I just said I did above). I check to make sure all the "LED" lights come on. When that checks out I turn on my modem and watch for the "LED" light for my "internet" port comes on; which it does. I hit next and I am informed to go to my "Network connections" tab in the control panel under "Network and Internet Connections."

Next I go to the properties for my broadband connection and go to the properties for my TCP/IP. I make sure that it is obtaining an IP address automatically and ok out of the windows. It checks my configuation and tells me the error I mentioned above or the following:

"Unable to connect to the Router! Check that the Router has been connected to the PC, or reset the Router to factory default settings by pressing the Router's Reset button for 10 seconds."

I check all the connections but for the life of me I do not see a "reset button" anywhere on the Router and honestly I'm not sure what changes I could have made to it yet if I can't even connect to it.

The very first time I tried this setup on my desktop I did get to a point where it was showing me my default settings for the router but then it gave me the "687" error again later. That was the farthest I got on any of the machines.

That is about as specific as I can get with what I am doing step-by-step. If anyone is a wiz at this I would certainly enjoy the know-how because I honestly don't know what else I could be missing and I havn't had any training on this.

It may be more difficult to do things by hand, but afterwards you can be sure that things are set up as they should.

You can reset your router to factory defaults in the router configuration. That is, in the special software that came for it or in the web interface for router setup or maybe telnet interface if your router happens to be manufactured by some sadist demons - read the manual.

I'll not embark on a setup guide here since I don't have any experiance with Linksys wieless thingies. I'm sure someone else will help out.

Check the cable-type (i.e. straight or patch) between modem and router.

Between PC's and Switch/Hub/Router you should always use a straight cable (look at both ends next to each other, with the same side up -like with the lip pointing up- the colouring of the individual wires from left to right should be the same).

Between Router and modem, more often than not you need a patch-cable (with wire-colours different when viewed as above).
Often instructions in user-manuals are wrong as I found out.

If you want to connect the NICs of 2 PC's only, you'll need only a patch-cable (no switch/hub required).